There's an anonymous story by a woman whose father claims to have been a Green
Beret, have 6 degrees, have been in a duel in Argentina, and so on. He later
defrauds her, opening credit cards in her name and not making the payments,
forcing her mother to take out loans to pay them off. Finally, she discovers
that he's essentially working as a scam artist now. She mostly just tells the
facts (though those facts do make a riveting story in and of themselves), but
she also does offer glimpses into her feelings about the whole matter.

The Naomi Watts profile, written by Chris Jones, who writes the sports column,
is ok. Nothing much terribly exciting.

The Answer Fella's column is hilarious as usual, this time rating on a one to
ten scale the level of truth of various stereotypes about women. Sample: "Women
crave chocolate." Degree of truth: 10. No, this isn't as pig-headed as it
sounds. AF talked to a woman who wrote Why Women Need Chocolate who
noted that since women store fat more efficiently than men (duh) and that their
bodies crave foods higher in sugar and fat than men's do.

One of the two true highlights, though, is "The Confessions of Bob Greene," by
Bill Zehme, about the fallen-from-grace syndicated Chicago newspaper columnist,
who was fired (his paper claims he resigned) for having an extramarital affair.
I'm not sure I like Zehme's barely veiled excuses for Greene, about why it
wasn't a big deal that this affair happened, but I do agree that the paper was
hasty in firing him. More to the point, Zehme does a masterful job painting a
picture of who Greene is now, especially after the death of his (Greene's) wife.
If you were a strict moralist, you might say he got what he deserved, but to me,
the beatings he's received in the media, the piling on that Zehme mentions, are
hurtful and pointless.

Finally, an interesting article by Charles Pierce about the metaphor inherent in
the fact that the Constitution is being kept in some undisclosed location while
being restored and recased to preserve it (the metaphor being that, in this time
of further and further reduced civil liberties, the document(s) that supposedly
guard those liberties are nowhere to be found). The writing is a bit showy, but
it isn't showy for the sake of showiness, I think: Pierce writes the article in
a sort of wandering way, here talking to the document restorers, there showing
up at Montpelier, James Madison's family estate (Madison figures heavily in the
article as the President at the time of the War of 1812 who had the Constitution
removed to a safe, secret location so that the British wouldn't burn it along
with the rest of Washington.). He wanders because the article is couched in a
search for the Constitution, or, he reconsiders, perhaps a search for America.

I like the article all around, but the line that will stick with me is this:
after quoting a Frank Gafney, Jr. saying, "[T]he contention that this [country]
is a police state is laughable," Pierce responds,

"Maybe the Constitution being hidden is only a metaphor, and maybe
the ideas are not really coming apart in tiny pieces the way the ink loses its
grip on the parchment. I just don't recall ever needing to be reassured that I
don't live in a police state."